An ancient tomb traditionally associated with Jesus’s midwife is being excavated anew by archaeologists in the hills southwest of Jerusalem, the antiquities authority said on Tuesday.

The intricately decorated Jewish burial cave complex dates to around the first century AD, but it was later associated by local Christians with Salome, the midwife of Jesus in the Gospels.

A Byzantine chapel was built at the site, which was a place of pilgrimage and veneration for centuries thereafter.

The cave was first found and excavated decades ago by an Israeli archaeologist. The cave’s large forecourt is now under excavation by archaeologists as part of a heritage trail development project in the region.

Crosses and inscriptions in Greek and Arabic carved in the cave walls during the Byzantine and Islamic periods indicate that the chapel was dedicated to Salome. Pilgrims would “rent oil lamps, enter into the cave, used to pray, come out in give back the oil lamp,” said Ziv Firer, director of the excavation.

“We found tens of them, with beautiful decorations of plants and flowers.”

Palestinian militant

A senior Palestinian militant jailed for life by Israel, and who was cited by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a speech to the UN, died of cancer on Tuesday, authorities said.

Nasser Abu Hmaid, the co-founder of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Abbas’s Fatah movement, had been convicted of killing seven Israelis and planning other attacks.

The brigades is deemed a terrorist group in Israel and the West. He was serving multiple life sentences and had been in prison since 2002.

In Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, armed members of Abbas’s Fatah faction rallied in the streets, some firing rifles into the air before they announced the formation of a new armed group called “The Masked Lion”, a nom de guerre of Hmaid.

Abbas accused Israel of neglecting Abu Hmaid’s medical needs and held it responsible for his death, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said. Israel’s Prisons Services aid Abu Hmaid, 50, had received “close and continuous treatment” for his lung cancer.

After Abu Hamid fell into a coma, the Prisons Service let his family visit him briefly on Monday, in the presence of guards, his mother told Voice of Palestine radio. “Thank God, I and his brothers were able to see him and pay him farewell,” she said, adding that she hoped his body would be released for burial.